Outbound call centers convert more leads when their agents know the right thing to say at the right time.

So when we’re talking about writing a cold calling script that gets results for outbound call centers, we should be thinking about strategies for breaking through those barriers to win the attention of the prospect on the other end of the line. Now, here’s the ice bucket…

You’ve got less than 20 seconds…maybe less than 10.

On top of that, today’s leads are harder to reach. So once you do get someone on the phone, you don’t want to blow it.

The primary tool your agents need to hold their prospect’s attention is a concise, well-thought-out cold calling script. Hopefully, your call center agents are using intelligent dynamic scripting – more on that later.

Once you’ve crafted your cold calling script, making that script come to life and work its sales magic will be in the hands—the voices—of your agents. So we’ll also offer a few tips on how to guide agents in a starring performance of your Pulitzer Prize-winning cold calling script. Okay, we exaggerate, but we do think this article can help you boost call center ROI, which is its own prize.

Here’s what we’re going to talk about:

Starting with quality data

Preparing before you write [your message is the foundation for your script]

Empowering agents with dynamic scripting for efficiency and lead conversion

By the way, cold calling is one tactic of outbound sales. The folks at Drift offer up some savvy advice in Outbound Sales: The Complete Guide. They tell us, “smart outbound strategy may be the secret to attracting new customers and powering up your growth engine.” To optimize your outbound strategy, be sure to use your dialer’s omnichannel capabilities so you can also reach leads via text, email, and ringless voicemail.

FIRST STOP: QUALITY LEAD DATA

Let’s back up a moment and look at the source of the leads you’re calling. Your call center campaigns will only be as effective as the quality of the data lists loaded into your dialer.

You can have the best cold calling script on the planet, but if you’re getting irrelevant contacts or nobody picks up… Shrug.

Outbound call centers need highly targeted lead lists, which can be purchased from a reliable vendor, or nurtured and strategically generated by your in-house marketing department or external agency.

Make sure to always use clean, reputable caller IDs and implement effective dialing strategies to protect your caller ID reputation. You need the capability for real time insight into how your leads are performing, so if a list is a dud that is not converting, you can pull that list or possibly the list source.

Of course, you want to avoid burning through those quality leads that you’ve paid good money to acquire. So, before your team starts calling, focus on maximizing your agents’ cold calling capabilities to drive productivity and revenue. When a potential customer does answer, they’ll be more inclined to listen to your offer and qualify themselves.

WHAT MAKES A GREAT COLD CALLING SCRIPT?

The short answer is one that converts leads.

Outbound call center managers who design customizable, targeted scripts will dramatically improve the performance of their agents. Below we’ll look at what makes a cold calling script great: how to prepare ahead of time, and recommendations for writing the script.

Preparation: What to Think About Before You Write

What’s your message?

Before you start writing your outbound sales script, you need to create a compelling message.

The next step will be to distill that message down to it’s essence, so those crucial opening seconds of your call grab the attention of the prospect, and entice them to learn more.

The best messaging doesn’t pitch a product, it tells a story. Stories make emotional connections with potential customers by linking their pain points to solutions provided by your product or service.

A little journalistic reflection

Don your press credentials, and think like a journalist for a moment. Your story assignment is to cover the potential customers who need your product or service. Answering those Who, What, Why questions will give you insights that will inform the message you want to create.

WHO are we talking about? Make customer profiles by identifying:

Professions

Demographics

Interests and hobbies

Needs and goals

Probable pain points

WHAT pain point or problem does your product or service solve? How does our product or service help the customer achieve their goals and needs? Identifying these will help you begin to see the world through the customer’s eyes.

WHY should this potential customer believe you? Why will your product or service work when other solutions haven’t?
Your message must convince the customer that you understand their problem. So put yourself in their place. Think about the experience that they are seeking, based on what you know about them.

Writing Your Cold Calling Script

Craft a Compelling Intro

In our blog post, 7 Must Know Tips To Improve Your Cold Calling, we talk about how cold calling is compared to bull riding. The first eight seconds are the toughest, but if you can ride through that, you’ll mark an increase in success.

With so little time to capture the attention of the lead, your intro needs to hit the bullseye on that first impression. No bull, just get to point. Okay, no more bull metaphors.

End Intro with a Question

Asking a targeted question at the end of the intro gives the prospect the opportunity to respond, and the agent the opportunity to listen and learn. This will determine the next step in the script for the agent.

Keep It Positive

Train your agents and put it into your script. If the lead you call says they’re not interested or they’re too busy to talk, keep it light, say “no problem” and make a note if you can call another time.

Remember the old sales saw, “Some do, some don’t, so what.” Move on.

A few WRITING TIPS before we move on:

Write like people talk – casual, natural conversation

Avoid overly technical words and catch-phrases

Use keywords developed in your prep

Communicate a sense of urgency, without conveying stress

Include clear, concise phrasing around customer needs

Use an active voice. People will respond more to the clarity and directness of an active vs a passive voice. Compare these statements: “Customers save money with our product.” [active] vs. “Our product provides savings for our customers.” [passive]

Script the Path by Anticipating Responses and Objections

Based on your preparation work, you’ll brainstorm and craft multiple potential prospect responses to the intro question as discussed above. You’re designing clear pathways, automated in your dynamic script, for your outbound call center agent to guide the lead toward a disposition. Hopefully, converting to a sale or transfer, depending on your objectives.

A Yes to Yes!

The positive responses will be clear. Write those first to get the hang of a conversational flow in which everything goes perfectly! Do a victory dance, and then get to work on the part of the scripted path that you need to give careful thought to developing.

What You Learn Through Pain

When writing your outbound sales script, incorporate customer problems and challenges into the flow. Your agents will be listening for responses based on questions you’ve carefully built into the script intended to help discover this particular lead’s pain points. Here’s a resource with some examples of questions that give insight on the customer’s perspective.

Design your script to paint a mental picture that enables potential customers to see and feel what life could be like if their pain points were resolved. Go beyond stating the obvious. Describe what they will be able to do and accomplish [customer goals and needs].

Know What to Say to No

Now is when you’ll pull in everything you know about answering objections. List as many as you can think of that may be raised about your product or service [you’ve probably heard them all]. Use these to write the scripted handling of those objections that your agents will say to the prospect.

Bear this in mind from The Ultimate Guide to Objection Handling: “Objection handling is when a prospect presents a concern about the product/service a salesperson is selling, and the salesperson responds in a way that alleviates those concerns and allows the deal to move forward. Objections are generally around price, product fit, competitors, and good old-fashioned brush offs.”

In that article you’ll find 40 responses to common objections, which can help you customize the remainder of your cold calling script path. And, below are 7 valuable tips they share for overcoming sales objections.

Practice active listening.

Repeat back what you hear.

Validate your prospect’s concerns.

Ask follow-up questions.

Leverage social proof.

Set a specific date and time to follow-up.

Anticipate sales objections.

The Personal Touch of Lead Conversion

Personalization is essential for salespeople and marketers. A whopping 88% of digital marketers in the U.S. have reported significant improvement in sales as a result of personalized outreach.

Find places to naturally customize your script by inserting relevant personal information, John Doe, from your CRM that will help build connection and trust with the prospect.

As a first step to personalizing calls, use the contact’s local caller ID, which will also increase the chances that the lead will pick up. Ask your call center solutions provider about this capability.

When Things Don’t Go As Scripted

The well-planned script allows the agent to directly and intelligently address the prospect’s responses.

That said, be sure your agents are trained enough in the product or service to confidently go off-script if necessary, and that you’ve planned for how they will handle unusual situations that seem to fall outside the flow of options available in the script.

Test and Tweak

You’ve written what you think is a pretty darned good script that accounts for all the objections and responses you’re already familiar with. But once that script is put into play, be prepared to get feedback from agents and to note where things don’t go as smoothly. Are there holes and tributaries on the path that you didn’t anticipate? You’ll need to adjust. Think of this as a flexible process in which you’ll refine your script as you learn what’s most effective. You may have more than one cold calling script you want to try out to track how each performs.

COLD CALLING SCRIPT MEETS CALL CENTER AGENT

Listening

At the beginning of a cold call when a lead says, “Hello,” the path ahead is unknown. The agent and the prospect are on a journey together, in a sense writing the script as they go. Careful listening by the agent will help determine the direction of the call.

Listening is power for an agent.

They’ll learn information from the prospect that will help them know how to respond, and where to go in the script. By listening, agents can learn from prospects what they want most, what they need, what they’re worried about, what they’ve tried before that didn’t work and why.

A Word about Tone of Call Center Agents

Keep a light, conversational tone. That’s pretty much it.

A robotic, boring, or stiff delivery of a great script detracts from the words they’re trying to communicate. It’s simply harder to generate interest.

A recent study reported that 28% of call center agents’ voices sounded strained and tired. How is an agent going to create quality engagement sounding like that?

Agents should practice their delivery, and get feedback from the manager or more experienced agents.

Here are some TONE TIPS to use when speaking with leads:

Have an upbeat vibe. The ol’ “smile as you dial” is worthy advice.

Use conversational, natural speech.

Convey personality and care.

Listen for the customer’s tone and mirror that to some degree. Being in sync can make a difference on how agent’s connect with the prospect.

A little self reflection: Express genuine interest and sincerity, and avoid getting pushy and acting out of self-interest. [“I need to make this sale!”] You’ll get more positive results.

Speak confidently. Call center managers can support agent confidence by ensuring adequate training on the product or service, and by providing a reliable, well-thought-out cold calling script with automated dynamic scripting.

Humanize the prospect. Use pictures of fictional leads to help visualize being in conversation with a real person while on the call. Is this awkward? Maybe. Will it help create better conversational flow with the disembodied voice on the other end of the line? Definitely.

DYNAMIC SCRIPTING DRIVES ENGAGEMENT

With the advancements of today’s automated technologies, lead generation call centers should be using smart, dynamic scripting.

Dynamic scripting prepares your agents to interact with each specific lead by auto populating dynamic fields you select within the script, such as their first name. It can also prompt agents to a new set of instructions or a different script loaded with CRM data, based on the reaction of the lead.

Once you input your script and set up the flow, a predefined page pops up every time a call is connected, prompting the agent to say the correct thing at the correct time. Scripts can be simple with all information on one page, or you can move page to page based on the lead’s responses.

Bonus of Dynamic Scripting for Call Centers

The automation of dynamic scripting decreases training time, helping to drive call center efficiency, and get agents on calls making money sooner. Managers report seeing agent motivation dramatically improve when using dynamic scripting. With greater efficiency, call center agents experience more success more often. The result? More revenue, lower turnover.

Boom. You’ve just boosted your ROI.

To understand the power of this tool, get a demo of Convoso’s dynamic scripting capabilities and other advanced tools for outbound call centers.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Agents can significantly move the productivity needle in outbound sales when they’re armed with a great cold calling script that engages leads in the first few seconds, and keeps those leads engaged for the remainder of the call.

ROI-boosting metrics used by most successful outbound call centers.

Are you tracking the right KPIs?

Anyone managing a lead generation call center is watching the numbers to keep their eye on the performance of their agents and data.

But with so many variables, some call center admins rely on only a few simple metrics. Unfortunately, this may skew their perspective of what’s really going on. They’re making decisions based on inaccurate or insufficient information.

Convoso customer John Gallagher is a numbers man. He lives and breathes KPIs.

“There are a variety of KPIs and they’re all really valuable to the ultimate profitability of the business. Profitability for me is everything.”

If you routinely measure and understand how to interpret your KPIs in relation to one another, you’ll have the means to strategically guide your call center operation toward growth and profitability.

Some metrics should be monitored in real time throughout the day. Some metrics should be analyzed over time—your historical metrics reveal trends over a day, a week, a month, a quarter. There are KPIs (say Agent Talk Time) that need to be viewed throughout the day, averaged over time, and in relation to Number of Sales/Transfers/Conversions and Number of Calls. You need to determine the right types of KPIs that are relevant to your unique operation [e.g., Lead to Transfer Rate, if you do transfers]; this may mean customizing reports with filters.

We’ll look at some key metrics used by most successful outbound call centers. While not a comprehensive list, these results-driven KPIs give you the tools to improve dialer and agent performance, which you can effectively monitor in your customizable dashboard.

Let’s get into the KPIs for your outbound or lead generation call center.

LEAD KPIs

1.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Your CPA provides a high-level view into the costs associated with converting leads. This should be the top KPI for your outbound call center. CPA measures the total cost to get one specific acquisition, whether that’s an agent-sold lead or a billable lead that you pass off to your client.

Understanding this metric allows you to:

Get clear insights into spending and saving opportunities

Optimize your call center’s return on investment (ROI)

View your call center’s various activities in one simple metric

Calculate the lifetime value of each acquisition, marketing costs, and expected profit

2.

Connection Rate

Connection Rate tells us the efficiency of the leads. It’s short term and gives you a daily snapshot. Here we look at the number of calls placed on a given day to leads. To determine the rate, divide the calls answered [including voicemails] by the total calls placed. For example, 25 calls answered / 100 calls dialed = a Connection Rate of 25%.

3.

Lead Conversion Rate

How many calls did it take to make a sale? In a nutshell, that’s the focus of this metric. Your conversion rate is the percentage of calls/leads resulting in a successful sale or transfer. A low conversion rate increases your cost per lead and impacts your company’s overall revenue.

Use real time reporting to track this KPI. It indicates whether a list is performing well, so you can make strategic decisions about data throughout the day.

LIST KPIs

“I can see if a list is burnt because our contact rates are super low. I can see a list that’s converting. And more importantly, I can turn off lists where we talked to a lot of people and it didn’t result in sales.”

4.

Contact Rate

Contact rate is a list level metric and is the key to understanding the quality of the lead list, and how well your campaigns are performing. It also indicates whether your agents and software are reaching the right leads at the right time.

Contact rate measures the percent of leads reached out of your total leads. To determine the rate, we divide the number of live person contacts by the total leads on the list. For example, 20 people pick up the call / 200 leads = a Contact Rate of 10%.

With a higher contact rate, your agents can spend their time productively by reaching the right people, especially with higher-quality leads. If your dialer is able to dial fewer leads while delivering the same number of qualified leads to your agents, you’re spending less to earn the same results. That’s contributing to your bottom line.

TOOLS TO MEASURE: Contact Rate Report

A contact rate report should gives you ways to find out which call-to-actions and lead sources are converting more than others. In addition to showing calls answered, this report should tell you more details about the call, such number of calls with no answer, voicemail detection, DNC tagged, busy, disconnected, call dispositions, total revenue, and more.

5.

Average Talk Time

Talk time is a metric discussed in the Agent KPI section, when we’re looking at agent productivity. But we also need to look at the average talk time on a list during a campaign. If you regularly track this, you’ll notice when talk time is higher than average on a list and it may give you pause. You’ll want to look at the conversion rate. If it’s high, then maybe that extra talk time is worth it, needed even. However… well, let’s hear what Heather Griffin, SVP of Inside Sales at Momentum Solar, has to say:

“Opportunity costs are our biggest costs. We’ve got payroll, we’ve got overhead, we’ve got telephony. So if I’m spending a long time talking to a lot of people and it’s not resulting in sales, then I’m wasting a lot of payroll.”

6.

Total Revenue

Different sets of data have different revenue values, so you need to look at it in a comprehensive manner. Here’s an example from our favorite numbers guy, John Gallagher, talking about efficiencies for your leads and lists.

“You pay $1000 for a list that converts into $15,000 in revenue and it takes 100 leads, which is $150/lead in revenue. Another list bought for $1000 converts into $30,000 in revenue, but takes 400 leads. In the second case, your revenue per lead is very low at $75/lead. Now factor in your agent’s time in terms of how much you’re paying them per hour to get that conversion. And, you have to look at your manager’s time. In this way you get a more accurate picture of total revenue when you look at the value of your lists and leads. Then it becomes really apparent where you should spend your time, and where you want to invest in the future.”

7.

List Profit and Loss

Use a List Conversion Report to provide a quick profit-loss for the period you run for your call center lists. View profitability of different lead and agent costs per List. Measure the quality of your data by combining revenue and billable hours, number of dials, to see raw performance as well as trends within certain lead sources. Get statistics such as # of dials, avg talk time, # of sales / transfers, answering machine %, etc.

Your list conversion tool should handle computations to help you determine profit or loss of your data:

Revenue per hour = Revenue / Estimated Billable hour

Agent Cost = Billable Hours * Agent Cost per hour

Total Cost = Agent Cost + Lead Cost + Minute Cost

Profit = Revenue – Total Cost

Additionally, you should have the capability to run reports from one of three list sources: Called List; Current List; Original List [based on where your leads originated, regardless of what lists your leads are in now. This is best used to gauge the revenue that a list produces and the quality of the leads.].

“There is a list management system within Convoso that’s really valuable to us. And when we use that, we’re able to drill down by the reps to find out who’s performing well. And at the same time we can manage our different data feeds to figure out which data feeds aren’t performing well.” —John Gallagher, CFO, Solar industry call center

Additional KPIs some of our customers track

Lead to transfer rate and billable transfer rate

Call to billable call conversion rate

Cost per transfer & cost per billable transfer

AGENT KPIs

Understanding agent productivity starts with objective metrics that are tracked over time. The numbers will guide you to knowing who your top producers are, who may need more training/coaching, and when someone may just be having an off day [unless it’s the data, which is why we track list metrics simultaneously].

“An agent who’s normally a good performer could be having a bad week for some reason. We’d see those results in the data within 4 hours and we’d be able to address it. Sometimes they just need time off. They need a break. Sometimes the agents burn out.” —John Gallagher

8.

Talk Time

Sometimes, more time on a call is just what’s needed to make a successful sale or transfer. Tracking talk time shows you whether this is about time to convert or the agent getting off track.

If calls are taking too long, try to streamlining your script. A call center solution that offers dynamic scripting will show your agents a clear path of conversation, addressing common questions, or even flagging an area that’s giving them trouble in a sales call. Agents become more effective and efficient.

9.

Wrapup Time

Also sometimes called ACW or After Call Work, track this metric by individual agent and over all agents, both daily and over a period, so you can determine if this time can be tightened up.

Minutes spent assigning dispositions, notes, and other manual tasks at the end of a call add up. Those accumulated minutes are costing you. That’s time your agent isn’t making other calls, and a break in the calling rhythm that makes your agents productive. Automating these tasks will add up to a noticeable improvement in productivity.

10.

Pause or Wait Time

This metric tracks the amount of time between calls. Our customer Michael Ferree recently found that by increasing the pause or rest time for agents between calls—just slightly—that they ultimately became more productive, and weren’t overdialing. Finding a balance is key—one that works for your operation.

“Managers fear losing speed or lack of performance. We used to sacrifice the agent in a push to meet our fulfillment goals. By managing the list at a higher level, our contacts and conversions are at slower rates, but our agents are delivering optimal performance.” —Michael Ferree, Manager, Resource Marketing

11.

Calls per Agent

Calls per Agent is a metric to indicate if your agents are on task. This can be an added challenge for a remote contact center operation where your agents work from home. Effectively managing productivity of your at-home agents means utilizing the agent monitoring tools and real time analytics of your cloud-based dialer.

To improve your Calls per Agent KPI, your system should have the capabilities to monitor agent performance, to automate workflows, to offer communication channels such as broadcast messaging and listen & whisper, to manage break requests and time clock, and to set auto logouts for pause codes.

Agent motivation naturally improves with a system that supports their success. Find and integrate features for your agents that streamline the calling process and automate tasks. Do your agents have access to these tools? Intelligent dynamic scripting to streamline calls and improve conversions, customizable dashboards, workflow dialing, and one-click to next call or transfer [Quick Dispo], saving time and maintaining a calling rhythm.

If your agents are consistently dialing, but your Calls per Agent metric is still low, the issue could be your dialer system. While automated dialing is now commonplace—hand dialing is obviously extremely taxing—your dialer must be optimized for maximum dialing efficiency, for example by automatically resetting the list and finding the sweet spot for predictive dial levels.

12.

First Call Close

The First Call Close (FCC) metric indicates the number of sales that were made on an agent’s “first call” or contact with the customer. While closing a sale on the first call may be difficult for some business models or even campaigns, the ability to do so will not only drastically improve your business’s overall efficiency, but will ultimately allow you to generate more revenue, faster.

Identify trends in the metric that have led to successful sales. Then constantly tweak and optimize your campaigns to account for those factors.

The best way to improve this KPI is by providing your sales reps/agents with a well thought out, dynamic script that will not only guide them through the success-proven process of a sales call, but will also help build your agents’ confidence. When your contact center software provides dynamic scripting, your agents have a very calculated approach to building rapport on the first call. Build that script with proven closing techniques and phrases, as shown, for example, in this Hubspot blog, 25 Closing Phrases to Seal a Sales Deal in 2020.

13.

Number of Sales and Revenue per Agent

Separate but related metrics that tell the story of daily productivity of an agent, and how those sales and revenue numbers compare with the agent’s averages over time.

Additional Agent KPIs some of our customers track

Call to transfer rate [with separate metrics for types of transfers: to Closer; to Lead Buyers]

Avg connected duration (Transfer)

Call to billable call conversion rate

Billable time vs Non-billable time

Billable calls per hour

TOOLS TO MEASURE AGENT KPIs

An AGENT CALLS REPORT tells you the total number of calls an agent makes and takes each day/week/month/etc, and breaks it down into outbound, inbound and manual call backs. It should provide their call times, such as talk time, pause time, wrapup time, etc.

An AGENT PRODUCTIVITY REPORT gives an agent by agent breakdown of their time spent with the dialer. It’s broken into total time, billable time (i.e., time they are making calls), login time, not ready time, and ready time.

Kyle Andersson of Digital Market Media says, “We use this report to see how the agents are spending their time within the dialer. This is a huge help for us, as we are a 100% remote team (including the agents), so the supervisors can’t be checking in on them as they would in an office.”

DIALING KPIs

14.

Average Hold Time

With automated dialing systems, customers are sometimes stuck on hold waiting for an agent to sell them a product or receive a certain deal. Prospects should not need to wait on hold before an agent answers an outbound call. It leads to call abandonment and reduces overall profitability.

If you see that your customers are waiting too long in queues, you will likely need to reduce your dialing level.

15.

Abandoned Call Rate

[for Inbound calls from Outbound Marketing ]

The abandoned call rate shows us the percentage of callers who hang up, or abandon the queue, prior to connecting with a live agent. This represents a possible lost lead, and indicates there may be issues with your dialer settings.

Here’s how to calculate Abandoned Call Rate for a selected timeframe. Exclude the first 5 seconds of calls to remove dropped calls due to incorrect dials and wrong number dials.

Abandonment Rate = [Total Abandoned Calls] / [Total Number of Calls]

To fix abandonment, look at adjusting call forecasting. Your outbound efforts might be too effective at certain times–leaving customers without a live agent to talk to. You should constantly be upgrading your messaging if you see your customers leaving during their IVR or in-queue messages.

16.

Average Dropped Call Rating

If no agent is available to take a call when a dialer has dialed, the call will be dropped. Monitoring the dropped call KPI is critical because, for legal reasons, your drop rating should not be above 3% over a 30 day period. You should be able to view the average drop rating for all of your campaigns.

To minimize dropped calls, make sure you have enough agents working on the dialer, and that you’re using quality data. Balancing Agent Wait Time [above] with the Drop Rate will create an efficient use of the dialer and leads. Keep tweaking your dial levels to find your sweet spot.

Versatile KPI Reporting Tools

Your cloud based contact center software should be able to customize reports. From standard reports, you want to be able to access metrics easily in the combinations that give you the most insight by using filters, fields, and breakdowns.

With good reporting tools you’ll quickly find out which lists, lead sources, and agents are performing—and which aren’t. A wide range of filters will let you set the reporting criteria that gets the information you need. At a minimum, your dialer’s reporting capabilities should provide the following:

Conversion Reports

Which of your lists are performing and which are not? Easily find out by comparing and sorting all of your lists based on success rate.

Lead Reports

Your leads are valuable assets. View all their information at a glance, filtered by status, campaign, list, and user.

Contact Rate Reports

An effective campaign begins with reaching your leads. Quickly see how many of your calls are making contact and how many are missing the target.

Agent Calls

Are your agents experiencing too much down time? Track call counts by agent and adjust workflows accordingly to increase productivity.

Custom Reports

Create your own reports to suite your operation’s needs. Filter reports and drill down based a variety of variables, from call type to dispositions.

Scheduled Reports

Running reports manually wastes valuable time. Increase efficiency by scheduling reports to be run and emailed automatically at a specific time — hourly, daily or weekly.

Keep in mind that…

Monitoring many KPIs with snapshot reports can be critical for quick decisions in a daily call center operation. They’re like taking the temperature. But alone they are inadequate to assess the health of a campaign, because they don’t reflect the influence of factors that need to be reviewed comprehensively, as well as over time.

Strategic decisions based on a strong grasp of your KPIs creates greater efficiencies for your leads/lists, agents, and management. Improving these efficiencies will yield a dramatically higher ROI.

Convoso Customer Story

Digital Market Media [DMM] is a successful inbound call generation company serving clients in multiple industries by providing their sales teams with a steady stream of qualified prospects. Their call center is a remote operation, so their agents work from home.

Challenges Before Convoso

Delivering high quality leads in a volume that meets Digital Market Media’s client expectations requires a level of efficiency and tools that were lacking in DMM’s previous dialer. “Our redial capability greatly hindered performance and ROI – we were dialing through too many leads inefficiently ,” said Director of Operations, Kyle Andersson. The company’s goals were to increase:

Volume of calls

Remote agent productivity

Number of qualified leads transferred to clients

Our Solution

Advanced Caller ID Management

Omnichannel features

Automated workflows

Support of dedicated product expert

Optimization of DMM dialer configuration

Real time in-depth automated reporting

Comprehensive historical data analytics of lists and leads

Streamlined processes with productivity tools for WFH agents

Reduce agent wait time with Quick Disposition Tool

Customer Results

DMM grew quickly with Convoso’s more robust dialer, new capabilities, and tools:

Previously unavailable automated management reports with real time analytics saves an hour a day

DRAMATIC IMPROVEMENTS — HOW THEY DID IT

Digital Market Media’s commitment to growth and improvement caused them to seek a more extensive solution with deeper analytic capabilities for their cloud-based call center operations. When the company switched to Convoso in January 2020, they jumped in with both feet to take full advantage of the suite of tools the web-based software has to offer. But they did it with help.

“Convoso was instrumental to our being able to scale up our agents so quickly. Now we’re able to talk to more prospects.” — Tom Carolan, Founder and Owner, Digital Market Media

As part of our onboarding experience, we teamed DMM up with a Convoso Customer Success Manager to review their goals, help optimize their dialer configuration, and introduce the management team at DMM to Convoso’s real time in-depth reporting and agent productivity tools to drive more efficiency to their virtual call center and boost profitability. Reflecting on the transition, Digital Market Media Director of Operations Kyle Andersson remarked, “Our Customer Success Manager, Dan, has been very resourceful in tweaking the configuration of our system to achieve the best ROI for our data.”

Robust Dialer Capabilities Yield Immediate Improvements In KPI’s

As DMM began employing features previously unavailable to their operations, they achieved results that confirmed the value of making the switch to Convoso. They were ready for a new phase of growth. Convoso’s advanced caller ID management, omnichannel features, and automated workflows helped to improve DMM’s call center experience very quickly.

INCREASED CONTACT RATE
After experiencing unsatisfactory results and frustrations with their dialer, Convoso’s advanced dialer provided a welcome solution. From onboarding in January 2020 to mid March, they saw their productivity and connection rates soar from a daily average of 7% in December 2019 to 20-30%.

“Previously, our redial capability greatly hindered performance and ROI – we were dialing through too many leads inefficiently. We optimized the disposition-based redial workflow, and attached automated remarket strategies within Convoso such as email drip automation. The robust caller ID management has made a big difference. We get clean, local Caller IDs for our campaigns, so we’re improving our contact rate while maintaining a positive reputation.” —Kyle Andersson

INCREASED TRANSFER RATE
The company’s primary service is inbound lead generation. When an agent has gone through the process of qualifying a lead, they transfer that call to the appropriate source. This is the equivalent of closing a sale. And as a metric, the rate of transfers is the truth-telling number about a call’s success, about an agent’s performance.“The most important statistic,” Tom said of their improved KPIs, “has been the lead to transfer rate.”

“Our lead to transfer rate has increased steadily since starting with Convoso in January from 2% to 8%. When you’re talking about hundreds of thousands of leads, that’s a huge increase.” —Tom Carolan

Remarkable Growth of Remote Team

Kyle noted the growth they achieved in a short period of time that has allowed the company to project continued growth for the remainder of the year. They had 15 agents at the end of 2019, and expanded to 30 within two months after working with Convoso. They anticipate adding 10 agents/month moving forward to meet their goal of 100 agents by the end of 2020. In the midst of nationwide layoffs and job losses, Digital Market Media is tweeting “Job Opportunities.”

Effective Management with Powerful Real Time Reporting

Digital Market Media’s diligent use of Convoso’s comprehensive and automated reporting tools helped the company to progress quickly by using specific metrics for day to day call center management decisions. As Director of Operations, Kyle Andersson sees how the data is trending over the day using the List Conversion Report.

“The List Conversion Report shows me the number of transfers per list. I can view the number of sales per week per list. It’s right there to see what’s trending up and down. Then with the Lead Status Penetration Report, I know where the disposition of the leads are in the list.” —Kyle Andersson

Access to new in-depth reporting features with an easier layout has saved management time and helped to increase agent productivity for the company. With reports automatically emailed to key managers, they view how agent time is spent on a granular level. To manage at-home agents, the company uses the Agent Monitor Screen, which shows vital campaign information, including the number of dialable leads, agent status, dial level, drop rating, and more. Admins can listen in on calls, whisper to agents, and jump in on conversations if needed.

Empowered Call Center Agents

“Our agents are experiencing a boost in productivity and enjoyment of the dialer. They like the dashboard and the more efficient processes. Supervisors and Managers are happier as well for the same reasons.” — Tom Carolan

Call center agents are able to be more productive when the dialing system they are using is efficient. In addition to the customizable agent dashboard, DMM agents use tools like Quick Dispo to eliminate steps and streamline the transfer process. With dynamic scripting, training is simplified as agents and managers trust the script to adapt for each new scenario. The smart scripts update lead info in real time and adapt to each individual caller allowing a more personalized sale. This helps DMM agents to do remarketing and cross selling, and to help prospects across different verticals, for an optimized ROI on a lead.

“We’ve tapped 50% of what Convoso can do. I can’t wait to see what happens six months from now.” — Kyle Andersson

Despite plenty of uncertainty in today’s world, you can rely on this: Convoso is experienced in helping call centers stay productive as they switch to remote agents.

We know how it works. We have been doing it for a while. Even before the Coronavirus pandemic, 50% of our customers operated with remote agents.

Our browser-based solution is based on flexible, advanced technology that allows you to smoothly transition your agents to work from home. Your team could be in operation right away with as little as a Chromebook, a headset, and a stable internet connection.

Our customer at NextGen Leads, George Mueller (VP Sales & Operations), has 80 agents who work from home with Convoso’s omnichannel contact center software. Here’s what he had to say this week, “We’ve even seen an increase in our productivity since transitioning to remote agents.”

Setting up your team for success

One of Convoso’s core values is to be positive. While acknowledging that this is an incredibly challenging time for everyone, we are committed to making lemonade from lemons. That’s why we’re here to help you maintain productivity for your call center operation, so you can stay competitive. [Join our webinar series to hear call center, technology and legal experts speak on a variety of topics related to virtual call centers].

Our solution gives you an advantage in the current marketplace, because many of the dialers used by your competition lack the capabilities to quickly and easily transition their employees to at-home workers.

Effortless Start up. Our solution is completely web-based, so unlike other dialers, there is no need for every agent to have software installed. We suggest buying agents low cost Chromebooks. Agents can access the Convoso dialer as long as they have a reliable internet connection.

Tools to Manage and Monitor Productivity. Numerous features such as the Agent Monitor, Agent Productivity Report, Wrap-up Time Limit and more help manage agent efficiency.

Listen and whisper. Admins can listen in on calls, whisper to agents, and jump in on conversations if needed.

Automations and workflows help you to keep an active workforce that continues to meet your goals.

Broadcast text messages to one or more agents in real time through the Agent Monitor and get visibility on who has acknowledged the message. With this feature you can quickly update agents or motivate the team.

Real time analytics, such as the List Conversion Report and Status Lead Penetration Report, enable you to follow the data trends of the day and maximize the efficiency of your leads and WFH agents.

All you need to support work from home agents

Stable internet connection

Chromebook

Headset

Let’s be creative in thinking of new ways of accomplishing our goals. Most of us learn by adaptive problem solving and embracing solutions we may never have considered otherwise. Keep in mind that WFH agents also give employers access to a bigger pool of talent, who can live in a variety of locations.

How are you adapting to the current situation? Please know that Team Convoso is here to support you in your efforts.

LEARN MORE in our April 22 webinar on “Keeping It Compliant: Legal Ramifications of Operating a Virtual Call Center”

Contact us about how we can help you convert your agents and admins to effective at-home workers.

Lift Contact Rates 30-300%

See for yourself how Convoso’s contact center software can dramatically improve your performance.